The advent of Internet-based electronic commerce in the 1990s spawned the development of online marketplaces, which are increasingly common electronic forums through which customers may place orders for one or more items over the Internet. Online marketplaces enable customers to visit one or more network sites from any corner of the globe, to view and evaluate items, and to place orders for the purchase of such items over the Internet. Initially, orders for items that were placed at online marketplaces over the Internet were fulfilled at the original locations of vendors (or manufacturers, merchants or other sources of the items), from which the items would be shipped to customers via first-class mail or another common carrier.
Online marketplaces soon became victims of their own successes, however, as gains in time or efficiency that were realized through the ease by which customers could place orders for items were soon consumed by losses due to delays in shipping the ordered items from their original locations to customers. Eventually, the growth of online marketplaces, and the rapid expansion in the scope and breadth of their available offerings, led to a concomitant proliferation of fulfillment centers. A fulfillment center is a facility, a warehouse or another like structure that is constructed in a distributed, centralized location and adapted to receive items from sources of the items (e.g., vendors or other fulfillment centers). Fulfillment centers may include stations for receiving shipments of items, for storing such items, and/or for preparing such items for delivery to customers. When an order for the purchase of one or more of the items stored in a fulfillment center is received from a customer, the ordered items are typically retrieved from the spaces or areas in which such items are stored, and prepared for delivery to the customer, e.g., by packing the ordered items into one or more appropriate containers with a sufficient type and amount of dunnage, and delivering the containers to a destination designated by the customer. 
As electronic commerce expands into ever more sectors of the economy, customers have become accustomed to, and are increasingly demanding, greater product availability and faster response times from online marketplaces. Shortening an elapsed time between the placement of an order for an item and a delivery of the item remains a primary goal of retailers that engage in electronic commerce. Improvements to any aspect of a supply chain may result in a shortened time of delivery, thereby providing substantial benefits to such retailers, and to customers who order items from them.